Wednesday, November 21, 2012

“The Bible
finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he
has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The
tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by
essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t
matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His
existence is one of perpetual war. Israel’s must be the same. The two states
solution doesn’t exist; there are no two people here. There is a Jewish people
and an Arab population... there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a
state for an imaginary nation... they only call themselves a people in order to
fight the Jews.” [1]

-
Benzion Netanyahu

The Israeli bombardment of
Gaza being perpetuated under ‘Operation Pillar of Defense’ comes at an
interesting time. Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the
expansion of illegal Jewish settlements into Palestinian lands has increased at
unprecedented rates. Netanyahu’s
administration has approved the construction of 850 settler homes in the
occupied West Bank in June 2012, even after the Israeli parliament rejected a
bill to retroactively legalize some of the existing homes in the area. [2]
The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank has almost doubled in the past 12
years, with more than 350,000 residing illegally under international law. [3]
While Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asserts Tel Aviv’s
unwillingness to permit Palestinians any right to return to their lands,
emphasizing, “not even one refugee,”
apartheid enforced on ethnic and religious lines has become a ratified part of
Israeli government policy. [4]
Far-right political discourse that was once considered extremism is now the
status quo in Israel.

While Netanyahu publically
announced support for a Palestinian state on the West Bank, his government has
threaten to end the Oslo
Accords if the United Nations General Assembly granted Palestine with
non-member observer state status. [5]
A panel of Israeli jurists assembled by Netanyahu’s government to determine the
legal status of the West Bank concluded that there is “no occupation” of Palestinian lands and
that the continued construction of settlement outposts are entirely legal under
Israeli law, despite critical international opinion. Netanyahu’s far
right-conservative Likud party was established on the philosophy of Ze’ev
Jabotinksy, who called for the establishment of a ‘Greater Israel,’ a concept
embraced by Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu, the father of today’s Prime
Minister. Under his fathers influence, Benjamin Netanyahu was indoctrinated in
the ideological foundations of Revisionist Zionism, which promote Jewish
settlement in Judea and Samaria (Palestine) and the full biblical land of Israel
by contemporary Jews, an oil rich landmass extending from the banks of the Nile
River in Egypt to the shores of the Euphrates.

As rocket fire hits Tel
Aviv for the first time since the Gulf War, the ongoing siege of Gaza must be
seen as what it is – a premeditated component of Israeli expansionism.
Netanyahu
was a zealous supporter of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2008-2009 sieges
on Gaza known as ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ which killed over 1,400 Palestinians,
while Israel suffered only 13 causalities. [6]
On November 14, 2012, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched an offensive into
the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip and began announcing their progress through an
official Twitter account. IDF forces assassinated a prominent Hamas military
commander, Ahmed Jabari, who was allegedly in possession of a draft copy of a
permanent truce agreement with Israel. [7] The agreement included
mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of future military
exchanges between Israel and the Hamas-led political factions of the Gaza Strip.
Militants from the armed wing of Hamas in Gaza retaliated by firing rockets into
Israeli territory, a large percentage of which were intercepted by Israel’s Iron
Dome air defense system.

Benjamin
Netanyahu used this retaliation to claim the moral high ground by warning that
he will take "whatever action is
necessary" to stop further rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. [8]
IDF officials have called on 30,000 reservists to prepare for a possible
extended ground incursion into Gaza, as IDF forces indiscriminately kill
civilians attempting to strike Palestinian aerial and naval targets. [9]
The Obama administration has condemned Hamas for perpetuating violence, while
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government led by Mohamed Morsi recalled Egypt's
ambassador from Tel Aviv. Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil arrived in Gaza
after the second day of Israeli attacks in a show of support for Palestine.
Through ‘Operation Pillar of Defense,’ Israel is targeting the military
foundations of Hamas, while attempting to portray itself as a victim in the
international media. IDF forces dropped thousands of Orwellian leaflets over
Gaza, urging citizens to take responsibility for their own safety, due to
Hamas “once again dragging the region to
violence and bloodshed.” [10]

Despite
Israel targeting the elected Hamas government of Gaza, an article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “How Israel Helped
to Spawn Hamas,” cites a former Israeli official who claims that Israel
encouraged the formation of Islamist groups to counterbalance secular nationalists affiliated with the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO). The
Israeli government even officially recognized a precursor to Hamas called Mujama
Al-Islamiya as a charity group, allowing it to build mosques and an Islamic
university. [11] Israel cooperated with the influential Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin, who was opposed to secular Palestinian activists, as he spearheaded the
Sunni Islamist movement that became Hamas. In late October 2012, Gaza’s Hamas
government received Sheikh
Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, for an official visit. As part of
an aid development package, Al-Thani granted Hamas $400 million, at least $150
million of which will go towards a housing project in southern Gaza – it would
be reasonable to assume that large portions of that aid would be invested in
defense. [12]

The
support given to Hamas by Qatar must be understood through the context of its
engagement in Syria. The New York
Times articled titled, “Rebel
Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria,” states that the arms being
shipped to Syria by Saudi Arabia and Qatar are being used to bolster jihadists
and al-Qaeda affiliated groups attempting to topple the government of Bashar
al-Assad. [13]
Qatar has held numerous meetings of US-backed Syrian opposition leaders and
hosts a critical American military air base at Al-Udeid, west of the capital,
Doha. Qatar has also allowed the establishment of a Brooking Institute center on
its territory. Brookings’ Saban Center for Middle East Policy published “Saving
Syria: Assessing Options for Regime Change” in March 2012, and the
directives described in the report have ostensibly become the policy of allied
Western and Gulf countries aiming to topple the Syrian government. The Saban
Center that published the report was established in 2002 when Israeli-American
mogul Haim Saban pledged nearly $13 million to the Brookings Institution in an
attempt to influence pro-Israeli policy. [14]

Despite paying lip service
to the Palestinian cause, Qatar is supporting policy engineered to give Israel a
pretext to consolidate its power. Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia have cooperated
with the United States and Israel by exporting the Salafist ideology that is so
prominent among radical rebel fighters in Hamas and the Free Syrian Army, and
using their enormous oil wealth to fund and arm these movements. An unapologetic
Op-Ed written by Israeli columnist Guy Bechor titled, “Dangers of a
Palestinian state,” bemoans the possibility of an independent Palestine, in
fear of the nation becoming a hub for extremist
violence:

“A
sovereign Palestinian state will immediately absorb 700,000 Palestinians who are
living in terrible conditions in Syria, another 750,000 Palestinians who
currently live in Lebanon and hundreds of thousands of others who will flock to
the new state from all over, because to them the West Bank and Israel are
America – just ask the African infiltrators. Due to the ‘Arab Spring,’ Syria and
Lebanon would gladly kick the Palestinians out, and the Palestinian state would
welcome them with open arms in order to change the demographic reality on the
ground. Qatar and Saudi Arabia would fund the entire exodus.

Thus, the
Palestinian state would become one of the most densely populated areas in the
world and pose a direct security and demographic threat to Israel. In other
words, in the near future we may see hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
settling in the West Bank. Some of them are among the most dangerous people in
the Middle East: Salafis, members of armed Syrian and Lebanese militias, as well
as members of various jihadi groups. They will settle in places that overlook
Haifa, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and Jerusalem. The demographic balance in
this region will be changed forever. Our lives will become a Syrian-style
nightmare.” [15]

In
1952, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan spoke ardently of Tel Aviv’s ultimate
goal, the creation of ‘an Israeli empire’ – today, Netanyahu has led his
administration with megalomaniacal hubris, and has emphasized a
messianic-catastrophic worldview where Israel is “the eternal nation.” [16]
Indeed, a Salafist-dominated Palestine would cause troubles for Israel, and it
provides a much-needed pretext for Israel to militarily engage with Palestine
groups, with the eventual goal of recapturing their land for Jewish settlement.
‘Operation Pillar of Defense,’ launched just months away from Israel’s
elections, is a calculated component of the Netanyahu government’s strategy to
topple Hamas and continue absorbing Palestinian territory. Decades of occupation
and apartheid have shaped the current scenario; Israel has dehumanized an entire
people by seizing their land and forcing them into prison-like ghettoes.
Adherents to political Zionism have shown contempt for a genuine political
solution to the Palestinian conflict, and the Netanyahu administration is poised
to crush all opposition to the Jewish state.

Amid reports of rocket
fire striking Jerusalem, it is clear that the Israeli response will be swift and
unforgiving. While the historic plight of the Palestinian people cannot be
ignored, the conduct of Hamas is counter-productive and radical, despite the
Israeli firepower being exponentially more destructive. The siege on Gaza is an
impetus to consider Henry Kissinger’s prediction, “In 10 years, there will be no more Israel.”
Sixteen US intelligence agencies that collectively issued an 82-page
analysis titled, “Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East,” concluded that
Netanyahu’s Likud coalition has enthusiastically condoned and supported illegal
settlements, while enforcing an apartheid-style infrastructure upon
Palestinians. [17]
Israel, the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East, has all the
attributes of an international pariah state and its current path is
unmaintainable. If Israel devastates Gaza, the backlash would create momentum
that threatens the very existence of the Jewish state. Under Bibi’s watch,
Israel will either continue to enforce the ideological tenants of political
Zionism on its neighbors, or die trying.

A video posted on YouTube shows the moment when the signal of the Al-Quds Palestinian satellite channel was hijacked by Israel to show a propaganda message directed against leaders of Hamas.In the brief Arabic-language animation, a rat in a sewer claims that Hamas leaders have been hiding in sewers “like mice and rats.”The video was recorded by Asem Abdul Karim.

The Electronic Intifada’s correspondent in Gaza, Rami Almeghari, said that such propaganda would be unlikely to have any impact on people there and is generally regarded with mockery.In recent days, Israel has carried out deliberate attacks on Palestinian media, including the offices of Al-Quds TV and Al-Aqsa TV among others.Al-Quds TV cameraman Khader al-Zahhar lost his leg in one of these attacks that have drawn widespread international criticism.Since Israel launched its current assault on Gaza on 15 November, more than 125 Palestinians have been killed, including more than two dozen children, and more than 800 injured.While Israel claims to be targeting military infrastructure and combatants, it has attacked, in addition to media, banks, public buildings, police stations and other civilian infrastructure and medics at Gaza City’s main hospital say that most of the casualties they see are women and children.

According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013.

Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days!

Even since the current world’s tallest builing – the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – was completed, there has been a constant battle to build the world’s next tallest building. The current record holder stands tall at 828 meters and took five years to build, but a Chinese company called Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) aims to smash that record by building the 838 meter eco-friendly Sky City tower, in Changsa, China in a mere 90 days – and they’re planning to use prefab building techniques to construct the skyscraper so quickly!

According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days!

It's not a joke. According to the construction company, the skyscraper will be built in just 90 days at the unbelievable rate of five floors per day.

Pre-Fab Magic

They will be able to achieve this impossibly fast construction rate by using a prefabricated modular technology developed by Broad Sustainable Building, a company that has built 20 tall structures in China so far, including the a 30-story hotel[constructed in 360 hours - see link for time-lapse video].

Record numbers

Unlike the Burj Khalifa, the tower will be mostly habitable. Its final height will be 2,749 feet high (838 meters). Compared that to the Burj's 2,719 feet (829 meters), which include the spire at the top resulting in a total of 163 floors.

Sky City will use an astonishing 220,000 tons of steel. The structure will be able to house 31,400 people of both "high and low income communities". The company says that the residential area will use 83-percent of the building, while the rest will be offices, schools, hospitals, shops and restaurants. People will move up and down using 104 high speed elevators.

The record figures don't stop there: in addition to the 90-day construction time—as opposed to the 210 days initially reported by the Chinese media—the company claims it will cost $1,500 per square meter as opposed to the Burj's $15,000 per square meter, all thanks to the prefab technology.

They also claim it will be able to sustain earthquakes of a 9.0 magnitude and be resistant to fire for "up to three hours," as well as be extremely energy efficient thanks to thermal insulation, four-panned windows and different air conditioning techniques that were already used in their previous constructions.

The demonstration was organized by the pro-Israel organizations Stand With Us, the Israeli-Leadership Council (ILC) and the Zionist Organization of America-Western Region (ZOA). Jews of all denominations came out for the rally, staged outside the Westwood Federal Building at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Veteran Avenue, including Americans, Israelis and Jews of Iranian heritage.

About 100 pro-Palestinian supporters held a counter-demonstration across the street, on the north side of Wilshire Boulevard.

For the most part, the three-hour event was peaceful, but during the final hour, the situation became heated when a fight reportedly broke out between a pro-Palestinian protestor and pro-Israel protestor. Police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department and California Highway Patrol officials were on scene.

In response, pro-Israel supporters charged over to the Palestinian side of the street. Police officers stepped in to bring the Israel protestors back to their side.

Demonstrators waved Israeli and American flags along with signs with slogans such as: “Israel Deserves Security;” “Hamas is the Enemy of Peace;” “Gaza Children Deserve Education Not Military Training” and more.

“We are here to protest the necessity of peace, the danger of those who would seek to destroy us and our determination to live both in strength and with justice and with peace,” Wolpe said.

“Am Yisrael Chai,” he added.

Other speakers included Israeli actress Noa Tishby, ILC chairman Shawn Evenhaim, Roz Rothstein, CEO of Stand With Us and Orit Arfa, executive director of the ZOA-West.

Sam Yebri, president of 30 Years After, a nonprofit that organizes Iranian-American Jews in political, civic and Jewish life, was among a group of Iranian-American Jews in attendance. In addition, the Israeli Scouts of Los Angeles, a youth group from the San Fernando Valley, brought 47 teens.

All ages attended to show support for Israel. Chloe Bismuth, a 20-year-old UCLA student who said she travels to Israel every year, showed up with her knuckles painted to spell out “Israel” and tiny Israeli flags painted onto her cheeks. Israel is a “country all of us as Jews should rely on,” she said, “all of us who believe in democracy.”

Pinhas Avgani, 63, Israeli and a Woodland Hills resident, was among the dozens who gathered on the sidewalk at the southwest corner of Wilshire-and-Veteran to chant and wave flags, standing as close to the street as police officers would allow.

“When [Palestinians] put weapons down, there will be peace. If Israelis are going to put their weapon down, Israel will disappear,” Avgani said.

Naz Farahdel, a 24-year-old Iranian American Jew and a law clerk at the city attorney’s office, turned out with two friends, also Iranian American Jews.

The pro-Israel side aimed for a broad celebration of Israel. Upbeat Israeli music played loudly; people came together for Israeli dancing, and the crowd sang the Hatikva.

Until the pro-Israel charge across the street, the pro-Israel side stayed on the southwest and southeast corners of Wilshire-and-Veteran. A line of hundreds of demonstrators began at the southwest corner of the intersection, extending eastward, halfway down the block toward Sepulveda Boulevard. People led Israel chants, speaking into bullhorns. Passing cars honked horns and waved Israeli flags out of the windows. Meanwhile, LAPD helicopters circled overhead.

On the Palestinian side demonstrators carried signs expressing support for Palestinians and also denouncing Israel and the United States: “Resist Zionism and Imperialism;” “Let Gaza Live: Free Palestine” and “Stop U.S. Aid to Israel.” One banner read: “It’s not a war. In Palestine, it’s genocide.”

When the pro-Israeli group crossed the street after the disruption began, Rothstein called the Israel protestors back to their side. Soon, nine California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department vehicles parked in a line in the center of Wilshire. Police officers stationed themselves on foot at all four corners of the intersection, keeping the crowds to the sidewalk. Officers stood by the parked vehicles.

Chants turned ugly. When the Palestinian side chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” a man on the Israel side yelled back, “Bomb, bomb Palestine.”

Angering many on the Israel side, a pro-Palestinian demonstrator tied an Israel flag to his leg and let it drag in the street. A group of male teenagers, a middle-aged man and two elderly women on the Israel side responded by yelling out insults and curses.

Around 3:45 p.m., Rothstein, in cooperation with law enforcement, told demonstrators on the Israel side to go home. Rothstein had initially told law enforcement that the event, which began at 1 p.m., would end no later than 3:30 p.m. By this time, attendance of both sides had dwindled, but a sizable Israel group and a small Palestinian group remained.

LAPD officers accompanied the Palestinian protestors as they crossed to the pro-Israel side to walk toward their cars in the Federal building parking lot, where most of the demonstrators from both sides had parked. “We want to get those folks safety out of here,” a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department official told Rothstein.

Rothstein joined a police officer in a police car and using the car’s loudspeaker asked everyone on the Israel side to leave, as the car inched slowly in front of the pro-Israel crowd. “Thank you for your cooperation. Thank you for being here,” she said.

By 4 p.m., most demonstrators on both sides departed.

Rothstein acknowledged that the pro-Israel side had engaged in some bad behavior. “It is kind of why I sometimes worry about putting these things on. You never know who is going to show up,” she said. “But it’s a community and we have a tapestry.”

While the Palestinian side was small compared to the Israel side on Sunday, on Nov. 15, hundreds of pro-Palestinians had rallied outside the office of the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, near Wilshire and Barrington avenue. There, one attendee blamed Israel for the recent violence. “It’s saddening but it’s not shocking, and if you’ve been following the news today [Nov. 15] it had been reported that Israel had broken the cease-fire first. Unfortunately Western media has not been quick to follow up on that regard,” she said.

“But regardless I support neither Hamas or Israel. What I support is the liberation of the Palestinian people,” she added.

In addition to Sunday’s rally, local initiatives are showing solidarity with Israel, including a project organized by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles that enables people to post messages onto the Federation website in support of the children of Israel.

It takes a brave hacker to declare war on the state of Israel. As Israel’s neighbors can attest, declaring war on the Jewish state doesn’t tend to produce favorable outcomes.

Hacker inside (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So it was interesting to see the hacker group Anonymous declare “war” on Israel, which probably has as much legal significance as America declaring war on “terror”. Vowing to retaliate against Israeli strikes against Gaza, Anonymous claimed to have attacked hundreds of Israeli government and private Web sites, though Israeli officials say the damage has been minor. They also published names of donors to Israel. Israeli newspapers, busy covering the conflict with Hamas, have barely mentioned the attacks.

The interesting question is how Israel will respond. Jerusalem is unlikely to call in the Shayetet 13 naval commandos to raid hacker hideouts, or disrupt hacker supply lines by sending drones to strike truck convoys carrying Red Bull energy drinks. But the nation that disrupted Iran‘s nuclear program with the Stuxnet virus clearly has some cyberwarfare capabilities of its own, plus a thriving cybersecurity industry. an aggressive national intelligence service in the Mossad, and a general willingness to respond ruthlessly when it feels its national interests are threatened.Even if Israel does respond, they may find that it’s much easier to hunt Hamas missile launchers than a loosely organized group of hackers. But where the U.S. treats hacking as a law enforcement issue, if Anonymous crosses a red line (there are lots of those in the Middle East), then Israel may treat this as a national security issue. And the rules and the methods of that game are a lot tougher.

Anonymous escalates its 'cyberwar' against Israel

The hacking collective's latest campaign against Israel escalates, with defacements of Microsoft Israel Web sites and the publication of alleged donors to a pro-Israel group.

Medical workers in Gaza attend to people wounded by an Israeli air strike Sunday.

(Credit: CBS News)

Anonymous' hacking campaign against Israel to protest its attacks on Gaza escalated today with the release of a list of thousands of individuals who supposedly donated to a pro-Israel organization.
The collective posted a Pastebin document that it said featured names -- and in some cases home addresses and e-mail addresses -- of donors for the Unity Coalition for Israel, which claims to represent "the largest network of pro-Israel groups in the world." The document appears to be quite old: one of the military e-mail addresses belonged to Douglas Feith, the U.S. undersecretary for defense under Bush, who left that job in 2005.

A second document, allegedly also extracted from the coalition, appears to be an e-mail announcement list. It includes e-mail addresses from officials in the White House, Senate, and the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, as well as many news organizations.
The Unity Coalition for Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNET.
Anonymous' latest attempts to take Israeli Web sites offline or deface them, called OpIsrael, started last week and resulted in temporary outages or spotty connections to the Bank of Jerusalem, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and many other Web sites. A list shows more than 600 Web sites have been attacked.
One Anonymous Twitter account reported this morning that Israeli Bing, MSN, Skype, Live and other sites were "defaced by Pakistani hackers." A Microsoft spokesman told CNN that: "Microsoft is aware of the site defacements and working to get all sites fully functional We have seen no evidence to suggest the compromise of customer information but will take action to help protect customers as necessary."
A statement from Anonymous says "when the government of Israel publicly threatened to sever all Internet and other telecommunications into and out of Gaza, they crossed a line in the sand." CBS News reported today that Israel's attacks on the homes of Hamas activists "have led to a sharp spike in civilian casualties, killing 24 civilians in just under two days and doubling the number of civilians killed in the conflict," according to a Gaza health official.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz downplayed the denial-of-service attacks in an interview with Reuters yesterday, saying only one unnamed site was actually hit by a successful intrusion. "The ministry's computer division will continue to block the millions of cyber attacks," Steinitz said. "We are enjoying the fruits of our investment in recent years in developing computerized defense systems."